


listen as it whispers sweet deceit

by alexwf_afterdark (alex_wf)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Beholding Kink (The Magnus Archives), Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Dubious Consent, Gaslighting, Monster Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Not Beta Read, Other, The Spiral Fear Domain (The Magnus Archives), a WHOLE LOT of monster in this one lads, canon-typical spiral fuckery and violence, mag 187 spoilers!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:34:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27552388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alex_wf/pseuds/alexwf_afterdark
Summary: Jon's made up his mind about the fate of the Distortion, but Helen isn't going down without a fight.
Relationships: Helen | The Distortion/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	listen as it whispers sweet deceit

**Author's Note:**

> i... really have no excuse for this. i listened to 187 and could only think of jon and helen aggressively trying to out-dom each other, but like, in a weird and monstrous metaphysical way. enjoy?

Jon has underestimated Helen.

Yes, he’d known that it would resist, would be more difficult to bring to the Eye’s perception than the others had been. But the Spiral’s deceit runs deeper than he’d anticipated. Much, much deeper. 

“Want to try that again?” it mocks. Sure of itself, at least on the surface.

Around Jon, the hallways spin madly. The gaudy colourful pattern of the carpet bleeds into the walls and the ceiling, twists around itself in endless, mind-melting repetition. It’s Helen, it’s all Helen, but he needs the Watcher to gaze upon the very core of it and he can’t _See-_

The Beholding burns through him, out of him, and the air crackles with static and power, the sheer intensity of his thousand-eyed gaze forcing the space around him into some semblance of order. But it’s not enough. 

“Would you _stop that?_ You’re being a terrible guest.” Helen’s voice comes from nowhere and everywhere all at once, each word compressed into an instant stretching itself for hours on end. “Your power won’t hold here, so why. Don’t you. Just drop it.” 

It’s too much. The Watcher’s gaze tries to pin down the winding paths of the hotel corridors and simply slides off when they curl and fizzle and rebuild themselves. 

“Come on, Jon, just give up. There’s no point in being difficult, you know that. Why don’t you relax? Take a load off? Enjoy your stay?” 

Reality is tearing apart at the seams, and Jon can’t hold the frayed edges of it together. His fists clench in frustration. He is _not_ powerless here. It’s just a matter of looking hard enough, cleverly enough. 

“You can’t trick me anymore,” he snarls. Helen’s laughter rattles his bones and forces him to shut all his eyes in pain. The overwhelming sensation of vertigo does not let up. 

“Maybe, maybe not,” it sing-songs. “Does it really matter? You’re trapped anyway.” 

Helen is made of lies, but this at least is true. Jon is trapped, and that isn’t going to change unless he comes up with something, and fast. His vision is a swirl of colour and fractals and hotel doors unravelling and dancing and stitching themselves back together, but he can _feel_ Helen, its manifestation, the core of it, twisting around him in self-assured taunting. 

“What’s wrong, Archivist?” Razor-sharp fingers brush by him, split open his skin and stab into his eyes – no, do they? Jon screams out in pain even as he Knows his skin is unmarred and all his eyes are intact. “Oh, you’re no fun, cheating like that. It feels much better when you’re just scared.” 

Jon is not scared. Jon is Watcher, not Watched. But he _is_ confused, and uncertain, and the Distortion sinks its claws into him and feeds off the delirious disorientation of his mind, and how _dare it._ He can feel Helen drinking in his confusion, ripples of satisfaction travelling through the corridor walls. 

There’s the suggestion of a smart skirt suit, a glimpse of a tie, a split-second image of a hand with too many bones. Jon latches onto it with his entire consciousness and lunges forward, grappling at the ever-shifting construct that passes for the Distortion’s body. He feels it startle, taken by surprise. The corridors tilt and send them tumbling together in a confusion of limbs and fractured unrealities pretending to be limbs. 

His hands feel solidly and reassuringly real when he grips what might be a wrist or the lapel of a suit jacket. It’s hard to be certain when his gaze catches on the impossible patterns of it and fails to construct a logical, perceivable image. 

“Ceaseless Watcher-” An impossibly large hand wraps around his throat, cuts off the torrent of power clamouring to rise from him. _It’s not real, you can see through it, Ceaseless Watcher help me See–_

“Feeling awfully bold today, aren’t we?” It’s not really a voice anymore, as much as it is the movement of the floor under or above him and the way the air warps and bursts into sparks of nonsense that hurt his eyes. “You’re lucky I’m such a good friend, Jon.” 

Nails like knives slice what used to be his clothes into scraps of fabric that promptly dissolve into the air. Pure reflex makes him attempt to suck in a sharp breath he doesn’t need, an attempt that promptly fails when the fingers around his neck squeeze tighter with an echo of laughter. There are too many hands to keep track of, sliding over his skin and pushing into his mouth but never actually there when Jon attempts to bat them away.

It’s toying with him. Him, the Archive, the harbinger of the new world, and this mere aspect of the Spiral thinks it can treat him as one of its victims.

“I will Know you,” Jon growls, or perhaps the Eye does, shouting through his veins and using his body as a conduit, but what’s the difference anymore? “I will Know every part of you. Every door and hallway and lie. I’m going to unravel you.”

“Jon!” it gasps, mock-scandalised. Then there are two – three? Six? – fingers pressing down on his tongue and slipping down his throat, and Jon chokes on them. He feels himself buzzing with unreleased power, and Helen hums in apparent appreciation. “How very forward of you! My, my, what would dear Martin think?”

It presses more fingers inside him, anywhere it can reach, works him open, and the horrible frustration of being so _close_ to it and yet incapable of understanding is starting to drive Jon mad. Helen feels this, of course. Delights in it. Splashes of vibrant colour blink into existence around and inside him, there are wickedly sharp teeth nipping at his lip and his chest and drawing blood, and he tries to scream in pleasure-pain but no sound comes out. His body thrums with impossible sensations and he feels himself shaking apart under the myriad of not-really-there fingers and teeth.

“Isn’t that better?” it croons, smiling in golden tones of perfect deception. “No need for us to argue and fight, Jon. We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”

He’s inclined to agree. It does feel better, his brain screaming with overstimulation and begging for more at the same time. Helen plays his body like a fine-tuned instrument, and the song is so sweet it makes his head spin. Friends, wouldn’t it be better if they were all friends? If he could keep feeling this delicious torment forever?

It’s tempting. It would be so easy to give in. And yet, under it all, there is still the persistent tug of the Beholding, the itch he can’t scratch, that demands he take the Distortion apart and analyse it until it hides no more mysteries. It cuts through the delirious fog of his conscience and forces him to ignore his body and focus. 

Helen is terribly difficult to perceive. It flows and ebbs and shifts like water, slips free from his grasp and refuses to be categorised like the Beholding desperately wants it to be. Hides itself behind blooming fractals and smiles like headaches. But it’s not an impossible task. It isn’t invulnerable. Jon can feel the whispers of uncertainty within its walls, the beginnings of what could grow into delicious fear. The Archive has all the power it needs, Jon just has to use it properly…

He blinks away the misty haze of technicolour deception settled heavily over his eyes. There’s a shift in the air, hesitation as Helen notices what’s about to happen and its steady stream of satisfaction is abruptly interrupted. Jon focuses all his perception and aims it at the knotted strands of silver-tongued lies that make up Helen, the very foundation of it; reaches inside and mercilessly pulls at the strings, and it struggles and squirms and tries to shift into something new, but Jon doesn’t let it.

“What are you doing?” Oh, it sounds well and truly panicked, now. The knowledge of its fear rushes through Jon’s veins and crackles inside him in sweet, delightful bursts. A new, different kind of pleasure, somehow deeper and more satisfying than before, because it’s made of terrible truths and not of sweetly spun lies.

All of a sudden there are only two hands gripping Jon, one at his wrist and one at his throat. Finally, _finally_ Jon can see what passes for the Distortion’s face, its usual grin twisted into a sharp-toothed frown. Its eyes of swirling colours are fixed on him, shocked, and Jon gazes back in multiples. It’s hardly a competition at all.

“You seem scared, Helen.” The voice that rumbles out of him is laced with static, or perhaps it _is_ static, just barely shaped into words. Helen’s fingers tighten around his neck, cut it into ribbons, and he doesn’t feel a thing. “Are you? Are you _scared?_ ”

“No!” it shrieks, too quickly, too weak, and the golden strand of the lie pulses under Jon’s hands and finally comes apart. The sensation of victory that overtakes him is too wonderful to describe in words. 

“Ceaseless Watcher,” he calls once more, and this time he is not interrupted. 

For a split second, the unending corridors of the Distortion stop their perpetual shifting and changing and become perfectly Euclidean in their geometry. Normal hotel hallways with rows of properly labelled doors on either side and stairs that actually lead from one floor to the next. And the Beholding, at long last, Knows the Distortion as intimately as it knows everything else under its rule. The knowledge of everything that is and was Helen and Michael and the nameless thing before them writes itself in neat lines imprinted into Jon’s mind like a burning brand. It feels like gaining access to something hidden and secret that he should not be looking at, like decoding a mystery no one else could have possibly solved. And the Archive drinks it all in, claiming the information as its own.

The sheer ecstasy of it threatens to drown Jon. Nothing has ever felt this good, nothing could possibly feel as good as this new forbidden awareness and the lingering taste of a monster’s fear as it dies screaming.

He’s only vaguely aware of the hotel that was Helen or the Helen that was the hotel crumbling around him as he falls and falls and falls–

“Christ, Jon!”

Jon opens his eyes – just two of them, for now – and smiles up at Martin from where he lays on the dirt of the wasteland. His body is intact, as are his clothes, and all he feels is a bone-deep contentment and the ever-present thrumming of terribly wondrous knowledge inside his skull.

**Author's Note:**

> this ended up having way less sex and way more monster than expected. 
> 
> please do comment your thoughts on my absolutely unhinged 3am work


End file.
